"Of this thing, however, be certain: wouldst thou plant for Eternity,
then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, his Fantasy and
Heart; wouldst thou plant for Year and Day, then plant into his shallow
superficial faculties, his Self-love and Arithmetical Understanding,
what will grow there. A Hierarch, therefore, and Pontiff of the World
will we call him, the Poet and inspired Maker; who, Prometheus-like, can
shape new Symbols, and bring new Fire from Heaven to fix it there. Such
too will not always be wanting; neither perhaps now are. Meanwhile, as
the average of matters goes, we account him Legislator and wise who can
so much as tell when a Symbol has grown old, and gently remove it.

"When, as the last English Coronation [*] I was preparing," concludes this
wonderful Professor, "I read in their Newspapers that the 'Champion of
England,' he who has to offer battle to the Universe for his new King,
had brought it so far that he could now 'mount his horse with little
assistance,' I said to myself: Here also we have a Symbol well-nigh
superannuated. Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters
and rags of superannuated worn-out Symbols (in this Ragfair of a World)
dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, to tether you; nay, if
you shake them not aside, threatening to accumulate, and perhaps produce
suffocation?"

* That of George IV.--ED.

CHAPTER IV. HELOTAGE.

At this point we determine on adverting shortly, or rather reverting,
to a certain Tract of Hofrath Heuschrecke's, entitled _Institute for the
Repression of Population_; which lies, dishonorably enough (with torn
leaves, and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into the Bag
_Pisces_. Not indeed for the sake of the tract itself, which we admire
little; but of the marginal Notes, evidently in Teufelsdrockh's hand,
which rather copiously fringe it. A few of these may be in their right
place here.

Into the Hofrath's _Institute_, with its extraordinary schemes, and
machinery of Corresponding Boards and the like, we shall not so much as
glance. Enough for us to understand that Heuschrecke is a disciple of
Malthus; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal almost literally
eats him up. A deadly fear of Population possesses the Hofrath;
something like a fixed idea; undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms
of Madness. Nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual world, is there
light; nothing but a grim shadow of